Bunker 27
by Dubious Silence
Summary: Everything needs a purpose, even an defective Irken with a talent for senseless mass destruction.
1. The Bunker

**Disclaimer – I don't own Invader Zim, or any trademarked items within.**

**Author's Note – A flight of fancy that entered my mind while watching a select few episodes of Invader Zim; one of the few cartoons of the 21****st**** century that's worth a damn.**

_Italics_** are thoughts.**

_~Italics~_ **are the thoughts of 'the doubt.'**

**Reviews of any kind are welcome but actual constructive criticism is most welcome.**

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><p>The former Irken Invader watched the various layers of sediment pass by his vision as the transport tube lowered him into the deepest sections of his base. The lack of lighting and cramped nature of the tube was claustrophobic, but Zim didn't pay it any heed with a stony expression fixed on his face and his maroon eyes dull in disinterest. A small silver canister sat next to the green alien; devoid of any identifying marks save for a valve at the top and three handles affixed to the sides.<p>

The pad slowed as it neared the bottom of the base, several miles beyond even the deepest of human excavations. Zim picked up the canister by one of the handles, checking the value with a cursory glance as a precaution.

_Still sealed. Good._

He stepped off the tube's pad and made his way into the maze-like corridors of Sector 27, following a path he had long since memorized. Blank, purple walls surrounded him on all sides while bundles of red wire served as the ceiling. The floor plan seemed to have neither rhyme nor reason, but it had been done on purpose. Every single nook and corner had been personally designed by Zim to confuse and otherwise tire an intruder. At first the defenses were minor – empty rooms, confusing hallways, numerous dead ends, mislabeled directions and other visual tricks to discourage any explorer. After passing these measures, the defenses became increasingly lethal. Empty rooms gave way to heat sensing laser cannons, hallways to booby trapped entrances, dead ends to trap doors leading directly into blast furnaces and other deadly surprises. Zim's eyes began to burn brighter as he neared the purpose of the heavy security. Even with complete knowledge of the layout, it still took him nearly twenty minutes to walk the whole way to his destination; the distance involved another layer of security.

Before him stood a seamless wall with '**Bunker 27**' stenciled on it in black Irken letters. The section of wall was actually the face of an interlocking set of metal blocks, woven together so perfectly that even with magnification, it would be nearly impossible to spot the seam between the blocks. Zim mentally commanded his PAK to send the code for entry, an ancient irken poem nearly thirteen pages long with each word changed to a corresponding one from a list of 1,765 different languages. If a single word differed from the one programmed into its memory, the system would activate hidden particle guns, which would then reduce anyone near the bunker entrance to sub-atomic bits. A single tonal note of acceptance rung through the hallway as the door verified the code and the blocks slid out of place to allow safe passage. Zim, eyes now glowing like burning coals, didn't immediately enter but slowly counted off thirty seconds before continuing forward, cylinder in hand. If he had entered a second earlier the blocks would have returned to their positions in a single millisecond, crushing him until he was thinner than a piece of paper. With the blocks themselves running along the entire entryway, which measured around 300 feet long, into the bunker, it wouldn't have matter how fast anyone went, they would have been pulverized. The walls of the bunker itself were almost 400 feet thick, further augmented by a colony of self-replicating nanites able to repair any harm that may befall the walls. Made up with a variety of different hardened metals and diffusing materials, Zim was of the opinion that they made up the single toughest barrier on this side of the galaxy.

_But of course they are, I am __**Zim**__!_ His formerly blank visage turned upward into a slight smile as he recalled his former usage of third person. _What an arrogant fool I was._

His booted footsteps made loud echoing clanks in the void of the tunnel-like entryway, the only illumination being a faint green light pulsing from within the bunker. The darkness and the proverbial light at the end of tunnel reminded him of how Bunker 27 came to be; enlightenment only coming after a lifetime of ignorance.

Two years ago, Zim had been working on his latest bid to conquer Earth, when he had received a call from his leaders. For three years, Tallest Purple and Tallest Red had been continually putting up with his reports in the hopes that it would keep Zim docile and far away from the Empire if he continued to believe he was on an actual mission. However, three years of constant megalomania, insipid plans and the havoc that Zim had wreaked on the Empire even when so far away had eaten away on that resolve.

Their words were venomous and full of contempt when they finally revealed the truth of his mission. **Defect.** That label was the most prominent of them all to Zim. The rest of his denouncement at the Tallests' hands went by in a blur as he had tried to comprehend what was happening. He hadn't even really realized when his leaders had signed off and the communication screen only listed a long series of lines in Irken script – an official notice of defectiveness endorsed by the Control Brains. His mind wouldn't accept it at first.

**Banished. Defect. Exile. Failure. **

Those were not words he thought could ever be applied to him, much less from the very mouths of his beloved Tallest. After shaking off the initial shock, Zim searched through his PAK to study his memories; desperate to find a reason for his judgment. Years of repressed memories and events that had been overshadowed by his egotism suddenly began to filter through his mind, each one a testament to a new reality: The Tallest were right.

After the last of his memories finally concluded before his eyes, Zim felt nothing but an ache that resonated deep within himself. For the proud Irken Invader that had first set foot on Earth five years ago, his pronouncement to be a defect and an exile hurt like nothing else had. Everything he had done in a life time that exceeded a century and a half suddenly counted for nothing. His dream of conquering untold planets for his empire and to become the greatest invader in its history were shattered, leaving him with only the broken fragments to clutch. Zim had buckled under the new feeling. It would only be later and after extensive research that he would find the closest human equivalent for the feeling: anguish.

The reactivation had been long and merciless as Zim's PAK shut down his body and brought it back in standby mode; his PAK taking control. The pain had been too much for Zim and he decided to retreat to the safety of his PAK, where he would shielded from the unfamiliar emotions that plagued his fleshy mind. After ordering a complete lockdown of the base, Zim directed his listless body to his favorite pass time – making weapons. It was his coping mechanism, for while Zim never admitted it, he was an inventor at heart and he was in his element when making killing machines. The familiarity he had with cold mechanical devices originated from his smeethood, when the first thing he saw was a robotic arm introducing him to the world. It was the martial nature of his irken nature that lead him to be most enjoyed by creating machines that dealt death and destruction. It was a familiar comfort and an escape from reality as his PAK downloaded personality pulled the strings of its mindless host body.

Zim neglected everything as he unceasingly worked, while his mind was left in a state of unconsciousness. The computer, well aware of what had transpired with the Tallest, took his orders without comment or question as he supplied his master with the raw materials he needed. Gir silently watched from a corner as his attempts to talk to Zim were ignored. Laser rifles, Ion cannons, plasma launchers and other insidious weapons piled up as Zim focused on the small burst of enjoyment he felt upon each weapon's completion. Nothing else mattered at the time but to continue ignoring his exile, to ignore the hurt.

Zim's mental tribulation came to an end on the eighth day after the Tallest's call with him finally deciding to return to his mind, having grown restless from the limited input that he received from the dull senses of his PAK. That had been another first for Zim as he pulled his consciousness back into his fleshy mind, very much feeling like he had pulled his entire existence through the eye of a needle during the transition. He still felt the pain and the feeling of hopelessness, but he was able to hold it off with a grimace. Everything after that had been gradual steps to returning to normal. Eating Gir's waffles to placate the little robot. Ordering the computer to lift the lockdown on the house. Going back to Skool. He even began to plot against the Earth to throw Dib off the real reason behind his absence, but he didn't want to conquer Earth anymore.

In fact, he didn't know what to do. Having his life's purpose pulled out from under him had left him listless and unsure of what to do. Normally, an irken would self-destruct or go insane without actually having a function, but Zim was different. Somewhere in the errors programmed into his PAK, he had acquired the ability to operate beyond the normal boundaries of an irken. Irkens, even the Tallest, were all part of a gigantic machine with each one of them having a function to serve. Operating outside of that machine meant certain death for a correctly operating irken as they simply couldn't. But Zim had coped, thanks to his faulty programming that afflicted him since his 'birth.' His PAK had never fully turned him into just another slave like the others, hopeless but to obey. The tiny sliver of independence he had from smeethood was what had saved him as it gave him a vital foundation to rebuild upon. From the ashes, a new Zim was born.

From then on, Zim had grown both in size and maturity. Zim had previously been so wrapped up in his ego and short-sightedness that he had never really developed beyond the mindset of a child and his height reflected that. However, his breakdown had whittled away at that and in the two years afterwards he had grown explosively. Zim was at a loss to explain his physical growth to himself. Most irkens assumed that height correlated to the individual's natural ability, but Zim had seen very little to prove this with Skoodge coming to mind. In any event, while he was still shorter than the Tallest, five foot five inches was very tall for his race and had even coincided quite nicely with the human developmental stage known as 'puberty.'

Though he hid it well from Dib and the others, he had also advanced intellectually. Dib suddenly became nothing more than an irritation who was easily fooled into thinking that he still had a chance against his rival. It became almost funny to Zim how easily he could crush Earth once he was unimpeded by his ego-based stupidity. All it would take would be a quick trip to his space station, activating the onboard lasers, deactivate the teleporter in his base, a quick blast to destroy Tak's ship at Dib's house and he was invulnerable to anything the Earth could mount. No complex plans, no specified revenge against Dib and no warning; it would be smeet's play. Even Gaz would be helpless if Zim decided to bath the entire world in a continuous laser barrage. Earth would be left in ruins and anyone that survived would be easy pickings for the Ex-Invader. The only thing that stopped him was the fact he still wasn't sure what he wanted to do. The destruction of an entire world merely for enjoyment was not exactly a prudent move when you had no long term goal. Besides, it was the closest thing he had to home left, even if the liquid covering the majority of its surface was acidic to him.

However, Zim, no matter what he went through, was still Zim. He still felt the ingrained Irken need for destruction and soon realized the need for a type of release should he want to keep himself under control. So he made weapons. But instead of the hand held death-dealers he had previously worked on, he expanded his horizon. Planet cracking bombs, nanites that would replicate through striping entire worlds of material, biological weapons that would liquidate the infected's organs, a black hole generator and other fantastical creations. A multitude of ideas flowed from Zim's mind as he threw himself at his true craft. Soon, the base was filled with a multitude of apocalyptic weapons, many of which merely required a single button to be pushed for activation. It was only after Gir decided to play 'press all the shiny buttons in the base' that Zim realized that even within his own base, the weapons were not safe. While Gir was bad enough, the last thing he needed was for Dib to have one of his rare competent moments and break in to discover his creations. So, Zim built Bunker 27. With its thick walls, repair nanites, independent plasma generator, self-contained nature and very own labyrinth to protect it; it was the most secure location on Earth.

Zim shook off his memories as he finally came to the end of the bunker's entryway. Green light enveloped him as he entered the bunker proper, which was basically nothing more than an enormous warehouse. The source of the light was the numerous shields present within the unlit bunker, each one containing a different weapon of destruction within a self contained sphere of protective, green energy. Each shield was proportional to the object within and all had a holographic line of red Irken script that rotated around the equator to detail what was within. Logging in with the primitive AI system that controlled the bunker, since it was totally independent from the Computer's control, Zim glanced at his creations as he made his way to his ultimate destination. 'MX-4,' a mech suit fitted with enough weaponry and armor to make the Megadoomer look like a plastic toy armed with firecrackers. 'Object-12,' a tank-sized machine that drilled its way into a planet and created world-spanning seismic vibrations to devastate anything situated on the ground. 'DB-2 Bomb,' a sphere three meters in diameter that could be fired into a sun to stop the chemical reactions within and cause it to collapse in on itself. Zim's destructive side longed to unleash the weapons he had created and show everyone just what he was capable of, but Zim forced down on the longing as he reached his destination, the cataloging pad.

Zim stepped up to the raised pad, located directly in the middle of the bunker, and set the silver canister he had been carrying all along in the center.

"Bunker, Command: New Entry." Zim intoned loudly after stepping off the pad.

"**Command Confirmed.**" The Bunker AI thundered as the pad began to power up. "**Entry Classification?**"

"Classification: Nanites. Object Name: WC series, number 9. Hazardous Status: Level 4." Zim heard the plasma generator in the pad begin to hum in preparation.

"**Classification Confirmed.** **Begin Shielding?**"

Zim focused all his attention on the canister, its contents now classified as WC-9. Only three hundred nanites resided within the canister, but they had been programmed to seek out all organic life, break the victims down to raw atoms, and then construct more of themselves from the resulting material. Total time till an earth sized planet's biosphere would be destroyed clocked around anywhere from one day to a week depending on the delivery method.

_With a single turn of a valve, I could doom ever single life form on this miserable ball of dirt._

Zim growled lowly as he fought off his ingrained need for destruction and gave the order. "Begin."

The humming suddenly intensified as the pad activated its shield generator, enclosing the WC-9 canister in a floating green sphere as it had all the other contents of the bunker. Once the shield had been set in place, the pad powered down and the sphere was moved into the nanite section of the bunker by a robotic arm on the ceiling.

Zim's eyes began to dim as he saw his latest creation being moved away. He did a slow rotation and examined the long rows of bombs, mech suits, lasers, and other weaponry he had accumulated.

~_Why?_ _Why do you create them and then simply shelf them away? Surely you could buy your way back into the Tallests' graces with just a fraction that is in here.~_

The doubting thoughts came unheeded as always.

"Is that what I want?" Zim questioned himself out loud. A problem by being on an alien planet with only an insane robot and a snarky computer was that you were your own confidant, no matter how insane it was to seemingly debate with yourself.

~_I don't know.~_

"Exactly." He turned to the exit and started walking.

_~Then what? What are you doing by being a one irken arms factory?~_

"Nothing. I wait for a purpose to manifest itself," Zim growled in answer.

~_That's your plan? Wait for something to magically fall from the heavens? That's pathetic.~_

Zim reached the entrance and once again sent the poem-code to leave.

"Maybe, but have you thought of something to commit to in the past two years?" Only silence met Zim as he watched the blocks recede once more.

"Then I have only one rational option, wait for something. Even if it's been two years, something will happen eventually and I will go from there," Zim said in assurance. The doubt maintained its silence as Zim started back into the tunnel entrance of the bunker.

_~I suppose you're right. Plenty of people out there want to kill you and eventually at least one of them will show up.~ _

Darkness enveloped Zim as he walked away from the green light of the bunker's interior, a slight chill suddenly making its way through his body. He couldn't find fault in the doubt's logic.


	2. The Start

_Italics_** are thoughts.**

_~Italics~_ **are the thoughts of 'the doubt.'**

**Reviews of any kind are welcome but actual constructive criticism is most welcome.**

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><p>Zim didn't pay attention as his English teacher outlined how to write a proper essay, his monotone voice lulling half the class to sleep. High skool had ceased to hold Zim's attention since he had long since learned everything about Earth in terms of the sciences, mathematics and history. Everything not related to those subjects was just a waste of time in his eyes and merely needed to be passed so as to appease the skool officials; why should he care how to write a correctly formatted essay?<p>

_Oh, right. The Dib. _

Zim slowly turned his head to appraise his rival, Dib Membrane, sitting a couple seats to the left of him. As always, Dib was writing diligent notes on whatever Zim did, still hoping for that one slip up that would reveal Zim as an alien to the others. Zim felt amusement register in his mind before squashing it down as an unimportant emotional stimulus. In all probability, he could come to skool with an irken assault mech and the worm babies wouldn't even bat an eyelash.

_It's a wonder they haven't destroyed themselves yet. So stupid and yet they still thrive on this miserable, polluted rock. _

Zim still put up the facade that he was here to conquer Earth, along with everything else he had done before his banishment, because while Dib was a pain, he was even worse if Zim's behavior changed. Experience had taught the ex-invader that simply missing one day of school would put Dib into high alert and would warrant him trying to break into his base. Rather than have to deal with a Dib that was constantly bugging him, which Zim was sure would drive him to murdering the pest, he carried on as he had always had. The only real wrinkle to the plan was constantly devising fake schemes to keep Dib busy and none the wiser to Zim's true status. More often than not the plans, however insipid Zim intended them to be, actually came close to succeeding; requiring Zim to sabotage himself for Dib to 'defeat' him and maintain the charade. However, no matter what pretenses Zim wanted to maintain, Dib had been forever halted from entering his base. The last thing he wanted was for Dib to get any hint of Bunker 27 and then do something rash, like get atomized by the bunker's defenses. Even the humans were not dense enough to not care about the disappearance of a world-famous scientist's son.

Dib suddenly realized he was under scrutiny and turned to fix Zim with a glare; his determined grimace only serving to amuse Zim again.

_If you only knew how easily I could burn this world to ashes. I'd like to see your face then Dib-Beast._

Zim turned his head to the front of the classroom after firing back with a wicked grin. His grin faded as soon as he turned his gaze back to the teacher however. He longed for something to do; something real. Playing games with Dib had long ceased to be any sort of challenge and his need for a purpose was reaching critical mass. An irken was a fusion between flesh and machine at birth, with the flesh being so controlled and beaten into line that it might was well be classified as a machine that just happened to be made from flesh. Machines were designed, made and existed for a purpose. For an irken, even one as defective as Zim, to not have a purpose was deeply upsetting. It was an itch that couldn't be scratched until they actually applied themselves fully to something. For Zim, the itch had developed to a deep seated aching that incessantly bore on his mind; increasing in severity by the day.

Zim was lost in his thoughts when his visual implants suddenly displayed an incoming call icon in the lower left of his sight, flashing between green and blue.

_Gir. I swear if he's calling me just because he lost his pig again I'm going to…_

He mentally opened the link and was instantly deafened. A cacophony of blasts and the shrieking of metal met his hearing as he closed his eyes in pain and scrambled to reduce the volume. Quickly checking to make sure no one had noticed his reaction, he turned his attention back to the sound being tuned directly into his brain and the video displayed by his ocular implants. A swirl of shapes shifted in and out of focus with a lime green dog occasionally appearing within the melee of color. Laser beams screamed in and around the camera while the sound of multiple blasts commanded the background. Zim heard a distinctly metallic scream coming from Gir before a blast cut the link to static. Zim struggled to understand before the obvious came to him: _I must go home. __**Now.**_

"Teacher, I need to go to the bathroom, **immediately**!" Zim asked while shaking his upraised hand violently. The teacher ignored Zim and continued his lesson without even raising his voice.

"Teacher, I must go to the bathroom right now! It's urgent!" Zim tried again in the hopes of claiming his attention if not by annoyance. He saw Dib in the corner of his vision, staring at Zim with a suspicion-laden look on his face.

_Just what I need, Big-Head Boy knows something's wrong._

However, the teacher continued to ignore Zim and commenced with the lesson. Zim growled as his patience reached breaking point, he'd needed to get home and a human was not going to get in his way.

_To hell with this._

He rose from his seat and extended his PAK legs, charging the cutting lasers within them. The teacher sputtered in the middle of his lesson and fixed Zim with a glare while he strode to the class's windows.

"Where do you think you are goi…"

His next words were cut off as Zim blasted a section out of the wall with the cutting lasers, showering the classroom with debris. Everyone recoiled back from the blast while Zim ran through with his PAK legs propelling him forward faster than any human athlete could ever hope to achieve.

Zim tuned the world out as he raced home, not caring if he was exposing himself to the humans through the use of his PAK. Now outside of the soundproofed walls of the high skool, Zim could hear distant explosions from the direction his base was located, each resounding boom only forcing him to increase his pace. The explosions fell silent by the time Zim was half way home and that only served to increase his anxiety.

_Damn it!_ The joints in Zim's mechanical legs whined as he pushed them even harder.

When he reached the entrance to the cul-de-sac his base resided on, Zim's sight was instantly engulfed in dust. He could barely see in the dust even after he adjusted his implants and he soon found himself tripping on debris as he ventured forward. The ruins of the surrounding houses were barely discernable in the brown haze, the air tense and motionless. All sound had seemingly been forced away by the earlier explosions and the only thing to be heard was the distinct 'click' of Zim's mechanical legs meeting pavement. Zim paused as he considering the power needed to cause the amount of destruction he was seeing, but continued forward when Gir came to mind. His pace was measured as he navigated around the craters and piles of rubble, inching his way to where his house would have been. He tried to follow the pavement of the road, remembering that his base was at the opposite end of the circle from the road.

A brief rumble sounded in the air above Zim and he paused to look up. Above him, Zim could only see the brown dust that had been ejected into the air, but caught a brief flash of light.

_What is…_

Zim was blinded as a beam of pure light flew from the sky and hit an area barely twenty feet in front of him, throwing him on his back from the force delivered to the pavement below. He screamed as the tremendous heat and light from the beam seared his uniform and skin. The very air became hard to breathe as Zim dragged himself away from the burning brilliance. The energy from the beam crackled loudly in Zim's antenna, deafening him to everything save it. As Zim recoiled further and further from the light, the beam moved to outline a rectangular section of the ground with its destructive power. The ground gave way under the assault and soon a large rectangular hole was gouged deep into the earth.

The beam then died away with a final sharp crack that alerted the blinded Zim that it had gone away. He groaned in pain; his skin seriously burned, his ragged uniform was smoking and he could see nothing but a blinding white. All other concerns slipped away as he assessed himself, pain killers from his PAK flooding his system to get him moving again. He panicked slightly from his blindness, but calmed when his implants slowly began to filter away the wall of white, the world slowly coming back to him. His hands moved to remove the contacts from his eyes and he felt their semi-melted surfaces through his gloves, cringing at the thought of his implants taking their place. After reviewing his burns, he used his mechanical legs to slowly raise himself of the ground and set him on his unsteady feet, his burnt skin making crunching noises as he moved. Zim grew confused as his vision slowly came back.

_Everything is so muffled. _

Realization hit him and when he raised his hands to his antenna he felt nothing but a partially melted wig piece. His blank look turned into a grimace as he firmly gripped the wig and tugged with a sudden motion. The pain forced him to his knees as he felt pieces of his scalp leave with the wig, but relief set in after his antenna were set free and their stream of sensory information became unhindered.

A deep rumble forced his attention upward. The dust cloud had largely settled on the ground, fully revealing the complete devastation of his cul-de-sac. However, that was not what had Zim's attention; it was the object slowly rising from the hole that had been cut by the beam. It was Bunker 27, its protective walls untouched but aglow from the heat of the cutting beam. Confusion seized his mind as stared at the bunker, but a sudden simmer of light in the air above revealed the truth to him. He searched the sky and finally saw the tiny imperfections, all of them outlining a massive object: a massive cloaked ship, nearly on par to the Massive in sheer size. All other details were hidden behind the cloak field. However, its size and power were enough to make Zim gap in awe of the vessel.

Bunker 27 disappeared into the underside of the ship, disappearing from sight as he cloaking field engulfed it, and a deep hum sounded. The intensity of the hum increased until the ship suddenly shot upward out of the atmosphere, the air displaced forcing Zim to the ground again and raising the dust cloud once more. Zim fought to get himself back on his feet and blankly regarded the now clear sky.

_They stole it._ _But who are 'they?' How did they cloak a ship that large? How did they know I was here? _

A millions questions swirled in his mind as absorbed the full implications of what had happened, but he pushed them aside as he stumbled towards his house. All he found were numerous craters, the main focus of the explosions revealed. The other houses in the area had simply been leveled from the shockwaves; his had been completely annihilated by the blasts. Finding nothing but scorched dirt at ground level, Zim sluggishly excavated the transport tube to the lower levels of his base and activated his PAK's hover mode to descend. Darkness commanded the interior of his base as he arrived at the communication room, the origin of Gir's transmission. Zim activated the night vision setting of his ocular implants, seeing nothing but shattered equipment littering the room. Wires sparked and electricity arced between metal objects, the last vestiges of the base's power still flowing through the grid. A quick scan of the area found no sign of Gir.

"Computer…report. Where's Gir?" Zim commanded blindly, the act causing pain to flare up on his burnt face. Silence reigned.

A quick check of the room where the actual computer's brain and systems were held revealed the reason for the silence: someone had set off a large plasma charge inside, reducing the computer to slag. Zim made a hasty survey of his base and found more of the same: laser burns, controlled demolition and the targeting of every single piece of equipment. Whoever they were, they had been very through in their work as they had destroyed everything of worth before ripping Bunker 27 out of the ground, circumventing the defenses outside of the bunker entirely.

_Never planned for that. _

Even his precious voot cruiser was gone, destroyed by the bombardment the mysterious ship had unleashed to level the house above along with the cul-de-sac.

Zim's returned to the communication room and felt his anxiety heighten. He had found no sign of Gir in his quick tour, but he began to systematically search the room with an intensity he hadn't felt in years. Zim had grown attached to the robot over the years and while Gir was worthless as a SIR unit, the relationship was very similar to the ones humans had for their dogs. He hardly ever listened, he always let people into the base and failed many times to appear when Zim had needed him; but he was **his** SIR unit. He had been there when Zim had been banished, a plate of waffles waiting while Zim retreated into his PAK. No matter what, Gir had been there for him; his normally irritating presence becoming a vital foundation for Zim's recovery. Even for the emotionally repressed irken, the bond he had formed with the robot was not something to take lightly. Zim froze as he saw a sliver of silver metal underneath a bundle of fallen cables. Running quickly over to the bundle, he raised the bundle with his spider legs and tossed them to the side.

It was Gir. However, instead of screaming for tacos or hugging his master upon seeing him, the little robot remained motionless. Holes riddled the SIR unit and the bottom of Gir was missing, wires hanging limply from where the top half had once joined the lower half. The rags of his dog disguise hung loosely from his frame and his eyes were black, devoid of the cyan blue colored insanity that normally shone in his lenses. It was only after Zim had turned Gir's head to the side that he saw the killing blow, the entire back of his head gone with the circuitry and bits of junk that made up his 'brain' fried. There was no way to repair the damage to his circuits and even if Zim could replace everything destroyed, it wouldn't be Gir. It would just be another SIR unit, not the scatter-brained companion that had been there when no one else had been.

Zim buried Gir in the crisp dirt of what had been his front yard, something he had seen humans do with their pets when they died. All thoughts of hiding irken technology or disguising himself had been forgotten as he dug the hole with his hands, not even bothering to use his PAK legs to help. Numbness had taken hold of Zim when he found Gir, but after erecting a simple metal pole at the head of Gir's grave, his emotions broke through. He was then assaulted by something he had never experienced before his time on Earth – sorrow. Gir was dead and there was no bringing him back. The faithfully little robot that had been with him for five years had been killed while defending his master's home and now Zim was alone. Whoever operated the cloaked ship had killed Gir and destroyed Zim's home. This stirred another emotion in Zim, one he and his entire race was much more familiar and agreeable with: anger. Hatred flooded his body as he dug his claws into the palms of his hands, cutting through the material of his gloves. _They will __**pay **__for this!_ _I will tear this galaxy apart, planet by planet, if that's what it will take to get them!_

Zim didn't hear Dib approach him from behind, but he did hear the laughter that erupted from the human. He turned to see the taller Dib nearly doubled over in mirth; giddy to see his rival gravely injured and his base gone. Rage clouded Zim's vision as he advanced upon the unaware Dib. The laughter stopped after Zim's left hook connected to Dib's jaw. The paranormal investigator was helpless under the frenzied assault, the ex-invader no longer playing pretend. Kicks, punches and even Zim's mechanical legs rained upon Dib, leaving him no room or time to defend himself. Dib fell to the ground after the tip of a metal leg ripped its way through his left thigh, hot blood splattering on Zim's boots. Dib tried to regain his footing to flee, but Zim answered with each attempt to get up with a harsh kick to his body, each one harder than the last. Little satisfaction came to Zim after he felt something give way and make an audible snapping sound under his fourth kick. After the fifth kick, Dib whimpered and rolled himself into the fetal position. Blood began to stain the cracked pavement below him.

Zim growled at his enemy's submission, the weakness displayed further enraging him. He reached down and hoisted his rival into the air by the collar of his trench coat, forcing the human to meet his gaze. Dib could only stare at the senseless anger he saw in Zim's eyes and the murderous intent etched on the alien's burnt face. He realized if he didn't do something, Zim would soon send him to a very early and messy grave.

"Zim, stop…please." Blood trickled from Dib's mouth as he pleaded with Zim, each uttered syllable a struggle for him.

"Why should I Dib-Stink? I've had a **very** bad afternoon and something tells me that while your death will not change that, it will be gratifying." Zim adopted a maniacal grin as he spoke, his inner need to cause pain enjoying the release after two years of holding back.

Dib's eyes shifted widely from side to side; desperate to think of anything that might give Zim pause. His thoughts moved sluggishly, the pain he felt and multiple injuries clouding his mind. "I have… Tak's ship!"

_Please work, please work, please work, __**please work!**_

Zim's grin faltered before his grip on the human tightened. "And? So what if I need it? I'm not going to spare you just so I can have the irken ship locked in your garage. I can just kill you and take it."

Dib grew limp in Zim's grasp.

"Anything else you could trade your life over that I can't simply **take** after your filthy worm body grows cold and stiff?" Dib only gave Zim a pleading look in reply.

"Thought so." A single mechanical leg extended from behind Zim and slowly made its way to Dib's head, tip first.

"Let's see how long it takes me to reach the other side of that humongous head of yours." Zim's face grew darker at the pointed tip of the leg slowly inched its way to Dib's cranium, Dib preferring to meet his death with his eyes closed.

_~What will you gain from this?~_

Zim hissed as a voice interrupted his focus. The doubt, yet another of the errors in his programming that afflicted him. Zim chose to ignore the doubt as he concentrated on his kill.

~_The worm did not kill Gir, but those that did are flying further and further away at the moment. What will killing the human possibly do except delay you further?~_

"Nothing, but it sure will feel good," Zim answered back, not caring whether or not Dib heard him.

_~No doubt, but he shouldn't be the focus of your anger, it should be whoever destroyed your base and took Bunker 27. The Dib is nothing, save your wrath for the ones that matter.~ _

"I have wrath to spare," Zim snarled as he pushed the mechanical leg forward, the tip touching Dib's forehead.

~_Do you want to deal with the Dib-sister if she finds out that he is dead?~_

Zim held the leg back before it could puncture Dib's skin.

~_On the off chance she actually wants to take revenge, how do you feel about facing her in the shape you're in? The only reason why you can even walk without a limp is because of the medicine you're getting from your PAK. Keep the Dib alive and we won't have any trouble with his sister.~_

Zim grated his teeth in frustration as he retracted the leg back into his PAK. "If I ever find out what part of my PAK you are located in, I will rip it out and fling it into the nearest black hole."

~_Love you too.~_

"Who are you talking to?" Dib had opened his eyes after he felt the leg leave his head and was staring at Zim as if he had lost what little sanity he possessed. Zim responded by knocking Dib out with a right hook, lifting the unconscious Dib up in his arms.

~_What was that for?~_

Zim ocular implants burned with smoldering fury as he used his mechanical legs to start towards Dib's house.

"It was either that or strangle him with his own vocal cords." The doubt chuckled as he departed from Zim's mind, the ex-invader glad to have the presence retreat for the time being.A scowl worked its way onto Zim's face and he looked down accusingly at the figure in his arms, taking note of the multiple bleeding wounds on his rival.

_Great, now along with the burns, I have human DNA seeping into my skin. Filthy, thin-skinned humans. _


	3. Questions

**Italics are thoughts.**

**~Italics~ are the speech of 'the doubt.'**

**Reviews of any kind are welcome but actual constructive criticism is most welcome.**

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><p>Zim had little trouble finding the Membrane house and forced the door in. The ex-invader flung Dib unto the couch in the living room, a muted groan issuing upon impact. A quick check of the human's vitals found a slow but steady pulse. Zim grunted as he checked the wounds he had inflected on his human adversary.<p>

_Nothing life threatening, even for such a weak species._

He scowled as he remembered the human blood that had gotten on him, disgusted as he examined the now drying splashes of red on himself. The red liquid mixed in with the small amount blood that had leaked from his wounds, creating black botches were the two meet. He felt foul and in desperate need of Irken cleansing chalk; god knows what diseases were flowing though the human's blood.

_Later, need to get off this filthy rock first._

With his former rival dealt with, Zim turned to leave the living room only to find Gaz standing in the doorway. Her eyes, surprising, were open as her gaze fixed on her injured brother on the couch, no emotion betrayed on her face. When she turned to Zim, her eyes returned to their normal scrunched appearance and blankly regard Zim and his own wounds. When she failed to address him, Zim strode forward to get around her. A pale arm stopped him just as he tried to pass her. "What do you want Dib-Sister?" Zim fixed her with a glare as he swatted away her arm.

She snorted in reply and situated herself in front of him. "The name is Gaz, _Zim_. He gonna live?" Zim mentally bristled when he noted that even she was taller than him now. _Damn them for their puberty._ "Yes, yes; He'll be good as new in a couple of months, _Gaz_." Zim walked around her and started towards the garage, anxious to see Tak's ship. His antennae noted the sound of boots following him. He rounded on it when he walked out the busted front door and the sound didn't veer off.

"What else, Gaz?" He asked with a trace of annoyance seeping into his voice.

"You do that to him?" Gaz questioned emotionless.

"Yes. Now shut your noise-hole annoying female and leav…"

The slap came unexpectedly and Zim hissed as the pain receptors on his left cheek lit up. Beforehand, a slap from Gaz would have caused no more than a sustained sting, but that was before he had been covered head to toe in burns. The look he gave Gaz was a mixture of confusion and anger, but Gaz stood unfazed.

"I wasn't done talking Zim. Now, what happened?"

"Why do you care, _female_?"

Zim held his anger in check as he answered back. He was in no shape to fight Gaz and the decided the quickest way to deal with her was to answer her questions. However, the idea of submitting to her, even in such small way, revolted him. He was an Irken; a member of the most powerful conquerors in the known universe. She hailed form a race whose average intelligence hovered just above functionally retarded. He shouldn't have to bow to her demands.

"I've seen Dib hurt before," Gaz began as she held her hands on her hips, "but this is the first time you've been the one to drag his sorry ass back home. You look like you had a close encounter with a flame thrower. Something happened, tell me or I'll slap the other side of your face." Her tone left no room for argument.

Zim signed in exacerbation. "House gone, ship gone, base gone, Gir gone and the ones that did it are getting away. I need Tak's ship to pursue them. Happy?" He didn't wait for a reply as he moved away from a stunned Gaz and used his PAK legs to force the garage door open. In the center of the garage lay Tak's ship. _What used to be Tak's ship._

Various components were laid out all over the garage floor and the ship itself was covered in dust. Zim noted the various tools and other items around the craft, vaguely amazed to the lengths that Dib had gone to work on the modified spittle runner. However, given the layer of dust on all of the equipment and the debacle of the 'Dib-Ship,' it seemed that Dib had long since given up on it. _What did he expect? It's not like he even had the right tools to work on it. _

Zim picked up the closest component to him and examined the ship more closely, trying to remember where each piece went, but quickly finding more problems thanks to Dib's previous work on it. Misaligned fuel lines, parts that had been put back in the wrong place, components crudely hammered into place when Dib didn't have the right tool and other mechanical problems met his ocular implants. Zim ground his teeth in agitation as the work he needed to do continued to pile up the more he inspected the ship further. _I swear Dib, if your sister wasn't here, I would strangle you in your sleep for causing this delay._

Zim was shaken from his thoughts when Gaz asked, "Are you going to explain how everything is 'gone' and why you beat up Dib?" She was leaning against the ship and was watching Zim as he examined the ship. Zim, tired of answering questions, ignored her and started the first of the repairs he needed to make. He pulled an assortment of tools from his PAK and laid them next to him as he worked. "Zim, do you want to find out how much it hurts if I sprayed water into your burns?" Her threat came out in a harsh tone, any thought of her bluffing a fool's notion. Zim once again found himself with two options: explain or pain. He chose explain.

"Someone attacked my base. They destroyed everything and killed Gir." Zim slammed home a panel with a bit more force than needed at the memory of his minion's death. Gaz made no comment, so he continued.

"I got the burns when they used a powerful laser to attack my base. Dib showed up some time after, laughing at my misfortune. I was angry; your brother was a convenient target. I spared his life and brought him here. I need Tak's ship to get revenge. End of story."

Zim deliberately left out Bunker 27 from his story, not exactly feeling any need to tell Gaz anymore than the bare minimum without her noticing.

"Why did they attack you?" Gaz asked as soon as he stopped. Underneath the ship, Zim mentally swore as he reconnected the energy lines to the ship's weapons.

_Perceptive worm baby, aren't we?_

"No idea, perhaps they are an enemy of the Irken Empire and came out here when they heard about a lone Irken invader on this pathetic planet. Easier target than attacking the Massive if they wanted revenge," Zim lied through his teeth as he fitted a thruster back into place with his mechanical legs.

"You're lying." Gaz said without emotion, she moved next to Zim and stopped him from fitting another piece into the ship. "You know why they attacked you. What was it?"

Zim growled lowly as he shoved past Gaz and fitted the component into its slot. "**Why do you care? **The only times I've seen you taken interest in my dealings is when it somehow interferes with that electronic device seemingly spot welded to your hands."

Zim took the time to look at her hands and was mildly surprised to see them unoccupied, the Game Slave she always carried around missing.

"My Game Slave broke today," Gaz stated as her knuckles rapped the side of the craft with a metallic hollow sound, "I have to wait til tomorrow to get another." Zim rolled his eyes.

_Like I care. _

"I'm bored," she continued in a monotone, "and unfortunately, your story is the most interesting thing at the moment. So continue and no more lying or I **will** get Dib's water gun."

Zim unconsciously gripped the wrench in his hand tighter, but held his temper in check.

"They came for something that is mine; something I've been working on for quite some time. That is the only explanation I can think of for the attack. They knew exactly where it was, spared it from the destruction wrought on my base, had a ship large enough to take it and got it so quickly that they must have known about it. Nothing else makes sense."

Zim fell silent as he began to brood on the attack, trying to unravel more about the attackers from what little he had seen. He was frustrated to say he had very little to go on beyond a powerful ship that rivaled the Massive in size.

_Wouldn't be so bad if the ship in question could not cloak, which it could._

Minutes went by as Gaz apparently mulled over the information he had revealed, Zim thankful for the span of quiet as he worked to get Tak's ship operational. However, the silence was broken when Gaz asked "Why didn't they come after you?"

Zim froze in mid-action as he mentally digested the question. He hadn't considered it beforehand in the rush to get transportation off of Earth and was at a loss to answer it. It made no sense to him after he considered what he had seen from the attackers. Whoever they were, they were professionals. They hadn't left any clear evidence to their identities, had struck with military precision, had considerable resources behind them if the ship was anything to go off of and had access to enough intelligence about him and his base that they had known precisely where to blast into the ground to get at Bunker 27. Everything suggested professionals who were not ones to leave loose ends and he was a considerable loose end.

For all instances and purposes, Zim should have been killed when they had first struck – a barrage from the cloaked ship on the Skool building a quick and easy way to deal with him. A solution they no doubt had thought of, but didn't carry out.

_Why?_

When Gaz realized that Zim wasn't going to submit an answer, she decided to annoy him in spite. "Maybe they don't consider you a threat."

Zim grunted noncommittally, not really paying attention to what she said as he considered her previous question further.

_Why strike with such precision and leave a potential enemy behind? Arrogance? Perhaps._

"You are a pretty bad invader after all," Gaz continued when she didn't get a reply.

Zim heard her this time, loud and clear. His hold on the wrench tightened again, but Zim held his tongue.

_Fix the ship and leave. Ignore her. Forget your pride… for now._

"You have been here for five years and yet you are no closer to conquering this planet. That's pretty pathetic considering your only true obstacle is my brother."

Gaz noticed the stiff stance Zim had adopted as he fought to control himself, a cruel grin broke on her face. She decided to twist her verbal knife a little more.

"Tak almost conquered this planet in what…A couple of days? Let's not forget that you needed us 'worm-babies' to fight her off."

Gaz's smile disappeared when Zim turned from her and silently continued his repairs on the ship. She wanted to piss him off, taunt him to the breaking point and beyond.

_Serves him right for ignoring me._

However, it seemed that Zim had more control than she gave him credit for. She racked her mind to think of something else to degrade him with and suddenly remembered his reaction when he had said Gir had been killed.

"You even failed to save Gir," she said condemningly.

A loud 'clank' echoed in the garage when Zim dropped his wrench and ran at Gaz. Before she could even register his movement, Zim violently pushed her into the side of the ship and trapped her limbs with his body. Gaz was momentarily dazed by her head hitting the ship, but quickly recovered to find Zim's face not even an inch away from her own, his maroon eyes blazing with rage. His hot breath spilled onto her face with each deep exhale he took, struggling to contain himself. His mechanical limbs extended themselves and settled their pointed ends on either side of Gaz, effectively trapping her in a spider's embrace. She focused entirely on Zim's eyes as she found herself waiting for his next move, unable to do anything herself due to the shock. Before she had been confident she could handle her own should she push Zim too hard, but it seemed that she had miscalculated. She couldn't even move, while Zim still had four other limbs to do as he pleased. And by the look in his eyes, what he pleased involved the coroners needing several hours to find all the pieces of her corpse.

Zim warred with himself over what to do to Gaz. She had gone too far, just as her brother had. His instincts screamed for her blood and for once, the doubt was silent.

_Perhaps he…it agrees with me_?

All it would take would be one quick swipe of his PAK legs and her life would be extinguished. Her attitude had grated on him since his arrival on Earth. Always getting her way had turned her into a bad-tempered witch of a human, never getting the punishment she should have received for her behavior. She had been bad when he had first arrived, but her development into a teenager had only worsened her behavior.

He had been an Irken soldier sucking up mud and blood in training before she had even been a twinkle in her father's eye. Who was she to demand he entertain her with his plight and then insult him when he didn't want to delve into it?

_But I can't really blame her alone, can I? _

She didn't know any better. No one challenged her, no one had ever told her 'no' besides her negligent father and everyone else was too afraid of her. Through force and intimidation she maintained a life where everything was to work around her, with her never backing down or being held back. She had never learned that there were things that were off limits, that there were times when she couldn't get her way and there were some beings that shouldn't be fucked with.

_She is a product of this polluted and chaotic planet. Her natural strength of will allowed to grow too big for her own good. She is what I used to be, too foolhardy and confident for her own good._

Finally, with his eyes simmering down to their normal dull color, Zim eased his hold on her and slowed his breathing. Once he regained enough of his senses to think clearly, he spoke to Gaz in a low and venomous tone.

"Don't **test** me human. I'm not one of those spineless humans that will simply back down with a glare. You are nothing more than a selfish child and that is why I will not kill you."

He pushed himself off of her and retracted his mechanical legs. Gaz felt herself relax now that she was free, but her gaze remained fixed on Zim as he spoke again. Zim saw her regain her composure and settle Zim with a withering gaze, preparing to launch another tirade at him. He was in no mood for it and decided to end it before it began.

_Perhaps it is time to dispel the image she holds of herself? The invincible Gaz, the little demon child that can't be told 'no.'_

"But I will do something that should have been done a long time ago."

Zim's left hand met Gaz's right cheek in a blur of movement, the sound of the slap reverberating off the walls. The force of it sent Gaz tumbling to the ground, her world suddenly became hazy from the blow. She fixed Zim with a look of utter astonishment from the ground, her anger forgotten as she realized this was the first time anyone had slapped her. No one had ever dared before Zim. She raised a shaky right hand to cover the red outline of Zim's hand on her cheek, hissing as it began to sting badly.

"Hurts don't it?" Zim asked, frowning down at her. "How does it feel Gaz, to not be able to do a **damn** thing about it? How does it feel to be helpless and realize that you are very much at my mercy?"

He expected some sort of emotional response for Gaz, but her face remained blank with her hand still situated on her cheek.

"Leave Gaz," Zim ordered in a calm tone.

Gaz scrambled onto her feet and ran out of the garage, the front door slamming shut moments later. Zim frowned even more when he realized what he had done, wasting time on a spoiled brat when he should have been fixing the ship.

_Couldn't really be helped, but time lost is still time lost._

Zim threw himself into the repairs now that Gaz was gone and within minutes had returned Tak's ship to functionality. Zim grinned as he wiped off his oil slicked gloves on his pants while examining his work. The repairs were hasty and ramshackle, but it would hold. Zim's grin disappeared as he took stock of his situation.

_Even with Tak's…my ship, I still don't have any supplies for my journey. I'd starve on the way to the nearest habitable planet. Not to mention even if I find the cloaked ship, I would be atomized in seconds in such a small craft at my disposal. I need supplies, tools and more hardware before I go anywhere. But the only place I could get any of that was my base and nothing in there is salvageable. _

Zim seethed as his predicament and began to pace the garage trying to think of a solution.

_Earth food? No, I can stand only so much of that before it begins to mess with my digestion. I'd never make it. Human equipment to upgrade Tak's ship? _

Zim stifled a laugh as the thought crossed his mind.

_Smeets' toys are more advanced than their technology. Nothing from this planet can help me._

A scowl worked its way onto Zim's face as he walked outside, hoping somehow breathing in more of Earth's semi-toxic air will somehow allow him to think better.

_Then what? It's not like there's anything within… _

Zim turned his gaze upward and found his solution. He ran back into the garage and settled himself into his spittle runner. Powering up the thrusters, Zim set a course for the dark side of the moon.


	4. First Stop

**Sorry for the long wait, life and all that. Made this chapter pretty long to make up for it. Sorry if the story seems to be starting rather slowly, its just the way I want to write it out. This should help out if boredom is setting it. Hopefully. Did a few edits of the previous chapters - nothing much to be honest.  
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**Also, someone please inform me why I continue to get these weird 'div' code tidbits on the end of my chapters. Its quite annoying, especially when you go into the source code and manually edit it out - and it still comes back.  
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**Edit - Problem solved.  
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><p>Only the low, steady hum of spittle runner's electronics made a sound as Zim flew above the moon. The lifeless, crater-ridden surface below went ignored by Zim as the guidance computer continued to project the flight plan for the former invader. The holographic overlay on the ship's opal-shaped windshield displayed a thin green line leading directly forward, over ro the dark side of the moon. It had taken two hours to get this far, with the spittle runner's repairs being quite delicate and Zim having no intention of it disintegrating with him in it.<p>

Zim tried to think optimistically, but whether or not what he was looking for was even there was open to question. A year and a half ago, Zim had decided that the space station he had put in orbit was just too obvious a clue of his existence for comfort. True, humans were incredibly dense, but all it would take is one above average astronomer for the entire race to be tipped off to his existence. So, he had towed it to the far side of the moon, hidden from most methods of human detection. However, the ones that had attacked his base were not humans and they were certainly not dense. They had seemingly known everything else about him, why not the space station? In all probability it had been attacked it along with the base, leaving him with nothing more to find than shattered debris. However, it was the last hope for the irken if he intended to chase after Gir's killers.

_If it is gone, I will return to Earth and rip out all of Dib-Beast's squishy bits. _

A wave of weariness rippled through his body and Zim's face grew grim. After setting the ship on automatic pilot, Zim laid back in the pilot's chair and felt exhaustion overtake him. While Zim had no true need for sleep, irkens could still get exhausted through overuse of their PAK's, the very thing that facilitated them living beyond ten minutes. The constant need to reduce Zim's pain from his burns, the frenzy of work to get the runner operational, and the spats he had with the Membrane siblings had strained his PAK's energy supply. It hadn't helped that Zim was due to replace his PAK's battery before the disastrous day had even begun either, so now his trip to the moon had an even more critical aspect. Either he would be able to find another battery for his PAK, or he estimated he would have only four days to live given the current energy demands his wounds necessitated. _No pressure._

Zim settled even more into the comfy pilot's chair of the runner and was pleased to find it was even better than the one he had personally installed in his destroyed voot cruiser.

_Too bad Dib never got around to purging it properly. It still smells like her. _

Zim pushed away the thought of the vindictive Tak and tried to get in a few minutes of rest before he reached the space station. Darkness enveloped the inside of the ship as it reached the far side of the moon, the lack of light only helping to lead Zim deeper into rest. With his eyes drooping, Zim felt himself to stop his constant mental calculations and settle into the closest thing he would ever get to the human phenomena known as 'sleep.' His PAK simply supplied the muscles with never ending nutrients and turned off select parts of the brain in a constant cycle that left him able to be constantly active both mentally and physically with no detrimental effects. The benefit of this process had been an entire civilization that never needed to sleep, but as Zim felt himself drift on the verge of consciousness and the accompanying peace that overruled his normally racing thoughts, he had to admit that maybe the idea of sleep wasn't so bad. Silence pervaded.

The relatively thunderous sound of liquid dripping on metal forced Zim to stir and look to his left to find a small pool of vibrant green on the floor.

_Blood. My Blood. _

A quick check of his left forearm found the source, a section of skin had cracked and peeled away to leave a winding open wound.

_Must have happened when I tussled with Gaz._ _How much painkiller did my PAK administer? I don't even feel it._

Groaning as he hefted himself upward, Zim ripped a section of cloth from his ragged shirt and tied it around the wound only to find he still didn't feel any pain or even much pressure from tying the cloth around it.

_Too much painkiller. _

After mentally adjusting the amount of meds his PAK was giving him, a vocal blip from the ship alerted him that the ship was in the line of sight of the coordinates and should be able to send signals to the station.

_Finally. _

The communication link on the display reported no new contacts. A sense of foreboding passed through the ex-invader's mind and he could do nothing but hope it was just a glitch with the station's communication array. An additional single tone sounded in the suddenly tense atmosphere of the runner as the flight computer noted that the station should be in visual range. Zim activated the low light filter on the windshield and zoomed in where the station should be in front of him. At first, nothing was visible, but slowly the dim outline of the station emerged from the surrounding darkness. Debris surrounded it, large holes rend into the hull leaking a steady tide of shattered equipment. Further detail became apparent as he closed the distance. The central command deck completely gone; the area where it had been obliterated and now open to the vacuum of space. The space station had been raided. Zim slammed his fists on the control panel.

_**Fucking bastards! **_

He let himself recline back into his chair as he examined the remnants of the space station with agitation written on his face. He stayed in that position for a few minutes, his previous anger simmering down as his cold logic took over. Though the devastation to the station seemed total, Zim was desperate and needed to be sure nothing was salvageable. The scan the runner did on the station as it circled the stricken craft came back with surprising results. While most of the station was highlighted in black denoting 'total destruction;' the hanger, the armory and a single store room were lit in green: completely intact and still retained emergency power.

_That doesn't make sense._

Zim fell back into his chair as he tried to decipher the meaning behind his enemy leaving such vital areas unmolested.

_Perhaps they aren't as good as I thought?_

A destroyed piece of machinery suddenly floated by and bounced off the runner's windshield before disappearing from view. Zim once again focused in on the void in the hull were the command deck had been, nothing remaining except sparking wires and twisted, fused metal.

_No, this was deliberate. Everything else has been completely wrecked but these areas. Why? A trap?_

Zim mulled over the possibility before he felt a familiar presence enter his mind.

~_Doubtful Zim, why leave you alone on earth only so they have the chance of killing you on your wrecked space station?~_

Zim snarled at the doubt and mentally recoiled from it in disgust. This was still his mind, not open for peruse by his most serious programming error.

"I thought you were content only to appear when a moral dilemma arose. Why are you here?" Zim asked bitterly as he redid the scan to verify the results from the station.

_~Because you are facing a life and death situation on whether or not to go on the station to look for supplies. Don't forget Zim, if you die by our PAK running out of power, I die as well. Besides, would you rather be alone right now?~_

Zim remained silent as he weighed his options and gave in after he considered the alternative: no help at all.

"Fine, stay. I still despise you though."Zim stated drily.

_~Yes, yes - I've heard it before Zim. I'm nothing more than a 'blasted programming error that should be deleted from the PAK of __**ZIM**__.' You can refuse it all you want, but I'm just another version of __**you**__. A bit more level-headed and emotionally detached I admit, but I'm still you. Now stop moping about having to share your head.~ _

"Well, what do you think is the reason behind them leaving these sections alone, almighty doubt?" Zim asked scathingly as he gestured to the results of the second scan, which merely repeated the first's results. The doubt held its silence until it returned with an edge of annoyance laced in its echoing speech.

_~I hate that name Zim. I want a new one.~_

Zim gloved claws raked the armrests of the chair as a show of his agitation.

"Why should you get one, you miserable sequence of code? You have been nothing but trouble for me since you appeared two years ago. Making me second guess myself, change my decisions and even tricking me into saving Dib when we still ended up tangling with his sister. Not to mention **we **are in the middle of crisis at the moment."

Zim maintained an even tone as he presented his case, not in the mood to get into a fight with someone who couldn't be physically pummeled into submission.

_~Cause if I wanted, I could make your life a living hell. How about I continuously stream the doom song into your brain? But that's not what I want if it can be helped. All I want is a real name Zim. So what is it - New name or the doom song for the rest of your life?~_

Zim was silent as he leaned back in his chair again, feeling as though the entire universe had been arrayed against him for some odd reason. First his race exiled him, his 'home' on Earth was destroyed, Gir had been killed, his space station and last store of life preserving supplies had turned up a smoldering wreck and now, after everything, a separate entity that dwelled in his PAK was threatening to revolt. The ex-invader toyed with the idea of pulling himself into the PAK to finally deal with the doubt, but discounted the idea when he remembered he had no idea to the being's capabilities. Might as well make peace now and find a way to kill it later.

"Alright, I will refer to you by a name of your choosing. Since you claim to be just another version of me, you should be more than capable of choosing one yourself."

While Zim merely didn't want to choose a name for the doubt, he also wanted to test it; to see if it was really capable of such an abstract concept as naming itself. If it couldn't, Zim saw an opportunity to validate his beliefs regarding its existence – nothing more than a complicated PAK error to go along with the rest that plagued him. Pregnant moments passed as Zim uncomfortably felt the being shift in thought.

~_I will be known as Oz.~ _

"Oz?" Zim asked in honest curiosity.

_~Initials. Other Zim; Oz. Fine by you?~_

"Fine, can we get back to the situation at hand? I'm going to get us docked in the hanger and we'll move from there. No sense trying to figure something out now when we'll have months on the way out of this filthy solar system," Zim said as he activated the flight controls and slowly moved to the hanger entrance. As shown in the scans, the hanger was indeed intact and the doors were even open. With the power out, Zim had to guide the ship in manually.

The interior was lit in the orange of the whirling emergency lights hooked up to the hanger's backup power source. After landing the runner, Zim searched the interior of the ship and found Tak's space suit. Though it was not his size and caused his skin to crawl due to its previous owner, Zim donned the suit and ventured into the hanger, a laser pistol from his PAK held in front of him like a shield. With the gravity centrifuges no doubt destroyed, Zim used the suit's magnetic boots to navigate the room and search for surprises. Finding none, Zim closed the hanger doors with the manual crank. He was in no mood for unexpected visitors.

"Well, hanger seems in good shape," Zim stated as he stomped towards the door out of the hanger.

~_Indeed._ _Looks like your worries over a trap were baseless. It seems you have the situation in hand, so I'm going to go back into the PAK for now, call me if you need me.~_

"With gusto," Zim answered drily.

A hazardous trip through the station's hallways found utter devastation. Numerous holes and missing panels lined the walls, opening the passages to the harshness of space. Darkness reigned with even the self-contained emergency lights destroyed due to the ferocity and thoroughness of the attackers. Though the occasional pile of debris and powerless bulkhead blocked his way, he conserved his cutting lasers due to his diminishing PAK energy supply, using the suit's shoulder-mounted flashlights instead to circumvent the worst of the damage to get through to the armory.

The black stencil letters on the door was partially scorched away by a near miss that had bored a foot wide hole through the ceiling and skirted the edge of the door before drilling through the floor. The ex-invader peered into both holes to find they both eventually led into space with their edges warped due to intense heat. A single bolt from one of the mysterious ship's weapons had gone through the armor that protected the station and continued on unabated to the other side; six floors down, and exited through another layer of armor without even losing enough power to shrink in size. Zim had to admit it, his attackers were indeed powerful if they had assess to that type of weaponry.

The door opened to a roaring torrent of air as the atmosphere from within the armory rushed out to into the vacuum of space. However, Zim was quick enough to enter and seal the door before total depressurization, preserving enough air so he could lower his suit's energy helmet to breathe easily.

The armory was just like the hanger; lit in orange, no gravity, but otherwise intact. A quick check of the weapon racks and supply lockers revealed nothing except all their contents were missing. However; one laser rifle, one plasma rifle, two laser pistols, a few grenades and two standard irken supply crates were left behind. The supply crates themselves had been stocked with a wide range of irken supplies, with each crate comparable to six months worth of sustenance and basic survival equipment for space voyages. Included in the second crate was a cache of PAK batteries, three in total. Zim tried to ignore the fact that they had been stacked neatly in the corner, as if waiting for him. However there was no denying the fact the supplies had been deliberately left for him.

Now using his mechanical legs' cutting lasers freely, Zim was able to blast a path straight to the hanger and carry all the provisions in a single trip, with the weapons in his hands and the crates in his spider legs. After piling the equipment next to the runner, Zim freed his PAK from his spine. Taking the depleted battery out and slamming in the new one, the PAK made a single tonal sound to signal its charged status. The PAK eagerly wormed its way back onto Zim's back and reinserted itself into his spine. The ex-invader felt his heart rate increase as the reinvigorated PAK came online and flooded his system with raw energy. His burns began healing at an accelerated rate, his muscles seemed to bugle in barely contained might and his previous haziness due to the painkillers wore off in an instant. The pain came back with a vengeance, but it only made feel Zim that much more alive.

A smirk formed on Zim's mouth as he felt himself almost radiate with barely contained power. Gone was the previous weakness and frailty and now there was only the high that came from his newfound strength.

_I had forgotten how good it feels to get a new battery!_ _How long has it been since I've last replaced my battery? Twenty years?_ _The power… its intoxicating. I feel as I can rip this entire station to bits with my bare hands!_

_~While I admit that would be fun, you still need to go check out that storeroom before you do anything else.~_

"I thought you were comfortable lying in my PAK, Oz." The statement came out more of a question than Zim intended.

_~Yes, but then I realized there's not much to do there and your mind is much more interesting to be in.~_

Zim grunted, but complied with Oz as he made his way to the intact storeroom. Thanks to his cutting lasers and newfound vigor, Zim made it in a few scant seconds. Light from sparking wires provided weak illumination as he made it in front of the storeroom. He inspected the identification number etched on the sliding door. _Hmmm…Storeroom B-5. The largest one in the station._

A feeling of alarm entered Zim's mind as he suddenly wished he had brought one of the rifles he had found.

_~What's the holdup Zim?~_

"Stop playing games Oz, you can hear my thoughts remember? This doesn't feel right." Zim tensed his body as he retreated from the door to consider the development, the former confidence from his recharge diminishing slightly.

_~Based on what? That it happens to be the largest? What kind of indication is that?~_

"Don't you feel it? It's just wrong. How do the humans put it?...'A gut feeling?' Something is off and whatever it is, it's in that storeroom."

_~Well since I'm nothing more than a personality with no access to what your 'gut' is telling, all I can say is that you're being more paranoid than usual. Just go in already. If they had wanted to kill you, why do it now? In a damned storeroom of all places?~_

The ex-invader growled, but otherwise kept silent as he considered his options. The storeroom had been left intact for a reason. There was obviously something inside it if his attackers had left it unscathed - but why? Why all of this? Why not try to kill him back on Earth? Why give him the resources he needed to go after them? Zim felt a headache coming on before he decided it was just easier to go in the room and deal with the consequences than trying to puzzle out the intentions of his enemy. Zim opened the sliding door into the storeroom and entered in quickly, shutting off his suit's flashlights so as to avoid detection. No light was present and Zim grew confused as he ventured forward slowly, his ocular implant's switching into night vision to aid him through enhancing the light streaming through the open door.

_The emergency lights should be on, power is still being run into this room. The room's personal centrifuge is on too. There has to be …_

The door slammed shut, plunging the room in total darkness. He whirled around to find the control panel for the door unresponsive and lit his suit's lights, now that his night vision was useless in complete darkness. Zim's sense of danger peaked when he found the door had been fitted with thick armor plates, making any attempt to cut his way out useless without taking at least half an hour to do it.

…_. it __**is**__ a trap. _

The oppressive darkness seemed to press in on him as he turned to face the interior of the room, his pistol raised and ready to meet any threat. The sound of escaping air filled the room as his suit alerted him that livable atmosphere had been returned to the room from an unknown source. Zim wearily lowered his energy helmet to unimpaired his senses, he'd need them if his suspicion was correct.

The emergency lights suddenly cut on, startling the ex-invader and casting everything in orange, swirling illumination. In the newfound light, Zim saw that the walls of the storeroom had been similarly armored as the door and all the contents of the room gone. Nothing remained except for the cramped rows of metal shelves that had previously been stacked with supplies and parts. With his laser pistol facing forward and constantly moving to cover all of the approaches to him, Zim waited as he contemplated his options.

_~It seems like I was wrong about the trap.~_

_Be quiet! I've had enough bad advice out of you today. _

_~ And your idea is…?~_

_Can't stay in place like a spooked squig, got to assume there is a way out of here or something left in here by whoever made this trap._

_~Why?~_

_Because I'm not dead yet, a simple bomb planted by them to go off instead of the door closing could have done me in easy. Not to mention that the atmosphere has been restored. They want me to stay alive to do something for the time being._

Zim started to move from the door when shrieking erupted from within the rows of shelves, paralyzing him in place. When the shrieking came to a sudden end, he backed into the wall and lowered himself onto one knee to peer through the vacant spaces in the shelves, his laser pistol following his sight. However, with the shelves so densely clustered and the orange rays of light constantly shifting, Zim couldn't discern the source. Zim stayed in place, straining his antenna to hear the slightest sound or sense any vibrations in the stale air.

From within the labyrinth of metal shelves, he could scarcely hear metal meeting metal in a rhythmic pattern – the timing suggesting walking. However, the placement of the shelves and the acoustic properties of the room made it impossible to pinpoint. Zim rose to his feet slowly, careful not to make a sound that might give him away while turning off his suit's lights, serving to be nothing more than a beacon for a potential enemy now that the emergency lights were on.

_I'm open to any ideas. _

_~Got anything on you from those supply crates you found?~_

_No, I... wait. The sound stopped. Damn, it might have spot-_

The shelf immediately in front of Zim violently shot at him. Only his ingrained Invader training allowed him to roll away before it could smash him into the wall behind him. He quickly recovered from the floor and turned only to find himself staring at a monster.

It towered over Zim as it slowly stomped through the opening it had made in the row of shelves, its form illuminated in the fleeting orange light. It had thick reverse-jointed legs with feet adorned with cruel spikes. Its torso gave the appearance of an emancipated human, a willow thin frame with an armored exoskeleton on top of it. Thick, bulbous shoulders gave way to equally thick arms; its relatively small hands ending with segmented blades for fingers. Its dull, metallic hide was punctuated by various crude welds and many parts of the hulking machine didn't seem to quite fit with each other, the maker seemingly not caring about looks.

However all of this was quickly and unintentionally ignored as Zim met the eyes of the machine, three sickly green orbs sunken into an oblong sphere that served as the machine's head. Instead of a cool, even stare denoting an unsophisticated AI, they were alight with unmitigated rage as they bore into Zim. The former invader felt his insides momentarily seize up as he realized that the machine was a hunter-killer and if the look in its optics was any indication, he was the target.

The hunter-killer threw back its head and let loose with a shrill of garbled code. Its intensity overwhelmed Zim's antenna and he had to drop his laser pistol to cover them. This proved to be a mistake however as the hunter-killer suddenly stopped its cry and leapt at Zim with its blades pointed forward.

_~MOVE!~_

Narrowly ducking under the attack, Zim rolled forward and ran into the opening made by the hunter in the shelves, hoping to delay it by using the shelves as makeshift obstacles. Panic began to set in his mind before Invader training took over and Zim forced a measure of calmness; he needed to think clearly if he was going to get out of this alive. He needed to get his pistol back. It may have been useless against the hunter-killer's armored shell, but if he aimed for its optics...

Running further into the maze of storage shelves, Zim heard the sound of the hunter tearing his way through the rows to get at him, the shelves doing an admirable job of slowing the killing machine down. Even then, the robot was gaining on the fleeing irken and it would only be a matter of time before it caught up. Zim cursed as he ducked around a particularly thick row of shelves and deployed his PAK limbs to give him more mobility, using them to hopefully give him the speed needed to outrun the hunter-killer.

A shrill cry above Zim forced him to look up only to find the massive killing machine plummeting straight at him with its claws once again seeking his flesh. Zim pushed with his PAK limbs as hard as he could to the side, propelling him away from the machine before it smashed into the floor with enough force to send him stumbling. The hunter-killer has no such problems as it leapt from its impact and slashed at Zim in a downward arc. Sparks and blood flew in equal measure as one of Zim's mechanical legs went flying and the tips of robot's blades cut through the front of his left shoulder. The ex-invader could only grit his teeth through the pain as he dodged a gutting swipe from the monstrosity and jumped onto one of the nearest shelves to backtrack his way to the entrance. The hunter-killer was soon following him again, the sounds of it tearing through the shelves even more violent then before.

_~THE SUIT YOU IDOIT! It has thrusters!~_

_Oh... right!... I knew that._

Zim toggled his suit's thrusters only for all four modules to explode as soon as they tried to fire, throwing him straight into the wall that had been more than a hundred feet away. He impacted hard and felt another one of his spidery limbs give way when they reflexively went out to cushion his impact.

_~It seems Dib tinkered with more than just the ship.~_

_SHUT IT._

His vision swam as he extracted himself from the wall and hurriedly got on all fours as he searched for his laser pistol.

_Where is it? DAMN IT, it was right here! _

The sounds of his robotic pursuer continued to get louder as he scrambled for his missing weapon.

_~To your left! Right underneath the light.~_

Zim slid over to his pistol, picked it up with his right arm and turned onto his back to find the machine already in a leap directly at him. Everything seemed to move slower to Zim as he desperately lined up his shot and fired. It bounced off the hunter-killer's metallic head, shattering one of its green optics with the heat transmission. However, the other two optics continued to glow with malice as it continued through the air. Right before the machine impacted, Zim threw his last two PAK legs in front of him, hoping to throw the robot's aim. The hunter-killer landed with a crunch as the irken was smashed to the ground.

Zim yelled in pain as white, hot agony enveloped his upperbody. Blood filling his mouth stopped his yell and he sputtered even as his implants whirled to assess his situation. His right arm, which held the laser pistol, was crushed beneath the hunter-killer's left hand and was cut to ribbons. Another of his mechanical limbs had been severed, but had deflected the robot's right arm downward enough to avoid being decapitated. However, two of the blades still found purchase in his chest, impaling and staking him to the increasingly bloody floor. Even now, Zim's vision was beginning to darken as his wounds threatened to overwhelm him.

For its part, the hunter-killer just seemed to stare at Zim, as if it was trying to process why the target had not died with its attack. It didn't remain this way for long though as it put more weight on its left arm, earning a gasping curse from the irken. Now balancing on its left arm, the mechanical monster pulled its right arm free of the floor and out of Zim. Twin spurts of blood erupted from his now vacant chest wounds and Zim felt himself become even more light headed even though his PAK was pumping him full of stimulants to keep him going. In Zim's view, the hand that was moving upward to deliver the final strike seemed to be moving much too slow, the machine seemingly drawing it out to torture him in his final moments. His sluggish mind raced to figure out how to avoid his ensuing death, but the blood loss and stimulants were muddling his thoughts. The only thing that came to him was just how heavy his assassin was as it continued to crush his left arm underneath its weight.

_Damn thing is... bigger than Sergeant Hobo 678. Wait... I beat Hobo. I drained his power and used the energy to knock his ass into orbit. I can't drain this thing, but I just put in a new battery in my PAK. Just need to up the power and-_

_~Are you joking? You body is a wreck Zim, it can't take the strain!~_

_**Shut. Up. **_

The hunter-killer's blade fingers were rushing down to claim his life when Zim mentally turned his power flow well above normal levels for a quick surge; the effect was instantaneous as he felt his entire body crackle with barely constrained energy. Wasting no time, Zim caught the descending bladed hand at its wrist with his left hand and twisted as hard as he could. The armored wrist crumbled under the strain and the elbow joint of the arm broke with a metallic whine. The hunter-killer gave a wounded sounding line of garbled code as it recoiled in pain. Zim took advantage of this to get his knees under the assassins chest and pushed the machine off balance. Without its left arm to stop its fall, the robot crumbled to Zim's immediate left.

Zim used what was left of his power surge to get to his knees and tackle to machine to the floor. The ex-invader pushed away the stars in his vision as he straddled the hunter-killer's chest, forced his right arm to level the laser pistol to one of its optics and pulled the trigger. White enveloped his vision perception and he flew back into something hard head first with a crack, crumpling to the floor immediately. The dazed Zim continued to see only white and hear only a dull ringing sound as he concentrated on breathing. His body was overcome with pain, but it felt far away to him. Like his entire body had become dull to such things. However, after a few moments his overworked PAK was able to get his senses back after a few false starts and Zim weakly moved his head from the floor to scope out his situation.

He immediately saw the hunter-killer in front of him. Its head was completely gone and its neck components were fused and smoking from intense heat. It didn't move for the fifteen seconds that the ex-invaded stared at it, so Zim was pretty sure it was dead. Zim grew confused as his mental faculties sluggishly returned to him from his concussion.

_What the hell happened? I pulled the trigger and then... oh. _

His laser pistol had been crushed along with his right arm under the robot's weight. The energy cell must have been ruptured and when he pulled the trigger - bam. Not exactly what he had expected to happen, but he was alive and it was dead. Good enough. A small grin worked its way unto his face even as he laid his head back down to rest. He had won the fight and he was alive; more alive than he had ever felt in two years. No matter what, Zim was an irken, and irkens loved to win. True he was mutilated and doubtlessly suffering injuries sustained from the blast he couldn't even feel, but he was alive and almost giddy from winning. Or was that from his brain injury? Zim didn't care either way.

As his mind continued to come back to him, he grew aware of Oz buzzing in the back of his mind - the other being's words garbled and too fuzzy to make out.

_Must have hit my head harder than I thought._

Focusing on Oz, Zim slowly got his words to understandable levels, but still had to strain to even get phrases in. He grew puzzled as it became clear that Oz was shouting as hard as he could, but Zim could only hear it as a whisper.

_~The blast... your a... gone...forget your hea... LOOK DOWN YOU F...~_

_My what? What's gone?_

He placed his entire attention onto Oz, temporarily severing the rest of his senses, and was finally able to hear him correctly.

_~FINALLY, you have to get your cutting laser out and seal the stump before you bleed out! HURRY!~_

_Stump?...what are you ta-_

_~**Look at your right arm, you brain dead defect!**~_

Ignoring Oz's jibe in the light of his good mood and the fact he was still slow from his concussion, Zim heeded its words and turned his eye implants back on. Turning himself over onto his back, Zim looked to his right to see the arm that had delivered the death blow to the hunter-killer. It wasn't there to Zim's dull surprise; all that was left was a blackened stump right below the shoulder. While the blast had done much to cauterize the wound, it was still leaking a constant stream of green that would prove life-threatening in his condition. The ex-invader dryly observed that he couldn't even feel it as his vision grew dark and he set his head down.

_~Zim, stay awake! Fight it off!~_

But the ex-invader's body refused to obey him; the short intense fight with the hunter-killer being too much for it as the injuries, power surge and stimulants finally took their toll. That was the primary reason why irkens never over-charged their bodies even in life and death situations - the strain was incredible on the otherwise tough irken body and most simply crashed after they did it, forcing their PAKs to reactivate them if possible. Even for Zim, who had abused his body beyond the breaking points several times in his life, it was simply too much. Oz continued to yell both insults and instructions at Zim even as his body completely shut down.


	5. New Boss

**Italics are thoughts.**

**~Italics~ are the speech of 'the doubt.'**

**Reviews of any kind are welcome but actual constructive criticism is most welcome.**

* * *

><p>Zim regained consciousness with three facts becoming immediately apparent to him. The first being that his senses were all turned off save a rather muted version of sensation. The second, he felt like he had spent a few minutes in an atom smasher and the third was the distinct feeling that something was wrong. An innate sense that something was… off. He pushed the feeling back as he focused on the matter at hand – getting back online. While he was technically an organic creature, irkens in general shared many characteristics with the computers and machines they operated. For instance, after a total shutdown of everything but the most basic of life processes, the irken body needs to 'boot' up each part of its 'hardware.' While it may seem like a weakness from being the bizarre hybrid that was an irken, it was much better than the traditional 'unconscious' state that most other organics experienced.<p>

With a few deft signals to his PAK, his body began to reanimate in a rather slow and deliberate matter, taking care to not ruin anything with an improper amount of electrical stimulation. 'Feel' came roaring back to life, leaving him to silently suffer from soreness even as his other senses came back one by one. Everything was blurry and distinctly grey-scale upon opening his eyes, but both color and clarity was restored after a minor diagnostic verified that he still had eyes and being able to see properly would be quite helpful. His first few muddled thoughts came to an abrupt halt once he realized exactly what he was looking at. Space. Or rather, space and the rather little text bar situated in the bottom right of his vision that read along with numerous other helpful info: 'SPACE_SUIT_STATUS_NOT_DETECTED.' Zim could only feel a vague sense of bitter complacence about that. His luck had never been that great.

However, considering he was breathing rather well and no alarms were showing up on his display, he figured he was not in danger of dying just yet. He couldn't decide if that was a good or bad thing at the moment as his body continued to throb and ache painfully. Now able to move the rest of his muscles as his body came fully came online, Zim moved his head around to see that he was back in Tak's ship, seated on the pilot's chair rather haphazardly and that it was moving at a steady clip to...somewhere.

_~How do you feel?~_

Somehow, Zim was actually a bit glad to hear Oz's voice.

"Terrible, but functional."

He closed his eyes to give them a break from the rather brilliant light given off the ship's console and rested his body back on the seat. The ex-invader felt very drained and lighted headed. Just how long had he been out?

_~You've been out for about twenty Earth hours. You received major damage from the hunter killer you fought. Needed a lot of time for your PAK to reactivate you.~_

Zim let OZ's words filter through his mind at a snail pace. He just felt so tired and drained that it was hard to think. Still, the mention of the robot he had faced and his injuries sparked a question.

"How did you get me back onto Tak's ship?"

_~Thankfully, __**one**__ of the PAK's legs survived the blast. With you shut down, I gained control of it and dragged you out to the hanger. The lock down had ended after the hunter-killer was killed by you and after a bit of low-powered laser shots from the sole PAK leg, you were sealed enough to move. Or rather you were as good as I could get you. I was a bit worried with all the holes in your suit that you would suffocate before I could get you all the way to the hanger, but it turned out alright. Tak's ship was helpful after I was able to interface with it. It may be brain dead after what Dib did to it, but it still has some rather helpful repair protocols still in is operating system. I got all the PAK's legs restored and gave you enough of a boost to allow your PAK to do the rest of your healing over time. Had to make a trip back to the storage room, then moved everything back onto the ship and set off. Didn't like the idea of waiting for any more surprises in that place.~ _

All in all, Zim felt a grain of appreciation for Oz now. The little _virus_ had actually saved his life most likely. Still, what he had said was a bit worrying. He had been able to control the PAK after he lost consciousness? No matter how grateful Zim may have been, he rather didn't like the idea of anyone being able to control any part of him, but there was little he could do about that at the moment. For now, he choose to ignore the problem and just relax into his chair. Reactivation was hell on an irken, no matter how slow and delicate. They were still made of flesh and bones, and those components didn't take kindly to being run like hardware in a computer. But Zim just needed some rest and he would be back on his feet in no time.

A moment of stillness passed as Zim stayed silent and simply lay back into the pilot's seat, not particularly enthusiastic about moving ever again. However, as his mind cleared, something OZ had said had stood out.

"Why did you go back to the storeroom?"

_~... I needed to scavenge some parts from the robot.~ _

Zim let a beat pass before his face scrunched up in confusion.

"Parts for what?"

_~You were damaged Zim... and there wasn't much choice. So I had to get creative.~_

Zim felt a leaden weight settle in his zebrek.

"Parts. For. What?"

_~How does your right arm feel? _

His right arm chose this time to throb in a dull but powerful burst of pain, making Zim hiss and close his eyes as he clutched his right arm with his left. However, instead of the the soft material of Tak's space suit and the yielding flesh underneath, he felt nothing but a cool hardness through the glove on his left hand. Already knowing that what he was gonna see would not be pleasant, Zim cracked open his eyes and turned them to regard his right side. The sleeve and the outermost shoulder part of the space suit and his uniform was gone, the edges straight and clean from a surgical tool of some type. Where once his normal arm was connected to his torso, a misshapen and rather crude metal parody of it resided. Grey metal plates encased the various sections of his shoulder blade; a support base for a hefty ball shaped joint that Zim recognized as one of the hunter-killer's 'hips.' The bicep section was one of the smaller segments of the the robot's legs and the forearm the same segment from the other leg, just cut down in size and apparently hammered so that is tapered into the 'wrist.' The hand was the only custom bit on the arm, a collection of servos and other robust hydraulics seemingly scavenged from whatever remained from the robot's neck components. The fingers where the same blade fingers that the machine had wielded, just down-sized into a vaguely appropriate size and dulled with the edge of a cutting laser. It was one of the most unsightly replacement limbs Zim had ever seen and it was currently sending him constant waves of pain.

_~I'm sorry about the pain you're feeling, but there wasn't enough 'touch' sensors in the arm for all your nerves to clip onto and the last thing I wanted to do was muck around with your nervous system, even while you were shut down. Be that as it may, the pain should lessen with time or whenever we get the proper time to perform some additional modifications.~_

Zim continued to stare at his new limb, both dazed and dubious. He wasn't quite sure which one was more prevalent. Mechanical replacements for lost limbs was not a too uncommon sight for an Irken; but they usually were sleek and almost unnoticeable or at least exquisitely constructed. An Irken missing a limb was like a gear missing a few of its teeth, so the Armada made a great to do about getting their warriors the best when it came to such extreme damage. Zim's new arm, in comparison, was ugly and mismatched. Oz had clearly done all he could with the tools he had and the precise control of his PAK legs, but considering the hunter-killer looked like it had been constructed out of a junk pile, there was only so much they could be done. Still...

Zim clenched his new hand into a fist, the rather high pitched sound of metal scraping against metal was loud in the small cockpit. While it may have been crude, the power of the robot assassin had been obvious and it showed as Zim felt the immense strength of the arm's servos. The speed and agility of the hunter-killer gave witness to the fact that while it wasn't made to be shown off, it was effective. And well laminated considering it's hull had absorbed his laser shots like they was nothing. It also gave a him a rather grim trophy, a new arm make directly from the parts of the machine that had indirectly taken it from him. A rather disturbing thought if not for the fact he was technically already a cyborg the minute his PAK had been attached to him. Zim slowly uncurled his fist and regarded it for a few silent moments.

_Well... better than no arm at least. _

Turning his attention away from his throbbing cybernetic limb, Zim took a minute to study the spittle runner's control panel and couldn't help but be a bit perplexed at the destination Oz had apparently set while he was out.

"Zeb's Landing?"

_~Well unless you can fully fix this ship with cleansing chalk and a pair of boots, we don't have much choice. We got to get this runner fixed before we do anything, and this is about the only place we can hope to find smuggled Irken parts. Everywhere else is either too small or guaranteed vaporization. There at least, we can get what we need and perhaps some information about who attacked us and left behind that robot assassin.~ _

Zim narrowed his eyes in thought, weighing the pros and cons. Going to Zeb's Landing, a semi-neutral space station that operated on the fringes of 'civilized' space, was risky... but he didn't have much choice. It was either that, or... nothing really. There was no other option that didn't end up with him dead or not finding what he needed. Besides, Zeb's Landing served as a huge trading post and resupply for all types of people. Chances of one of them knowing something useful about his attackers? Rather promising considering the size of the ship and material requirements needed for it to keep running. A ship of that size would almost be forced to visit or at least trade with Zeb's Landing at one time or another since it was the largest port that was not directly under the control of any one race and was dedicated to doing business with every race. Even Irkens could go there.

"Very well."

Indeed, Irkens _could_ go there. That didn't mean they would be welcome or couldn't count on being blasted the minute they left the port though. Trying to ultimately conquer all of known space had a rather nasty consequence of upsetting everyone _else_ in known space.

* * *

><p>After Zim located one of the nearest map buoys that revealed the current coordinates of Zeb's Landing (due to its planned migration from sector to sector to never settle into one market for too long), he pulled his ill-fitting space suit off and tore off the ruined remains of his uniform. After a good stick of cleansing chalk, some salty chips and a new uniform; he started to feel pretty good again. While he was rather nonplussed over the fact his attackers had seemingly left him a starter kit for get-revenge-and-blow-shit-up rampage, he wasn't gonna complain. If they were willing to leave him alive and drop supplies in their wake, he'd play their game. At least until he could get his mismatched set of claws on them and give them the standard punishment dolled out by irkens. Death, with just a hint of sadistic and mechanically-assisted torture.<p>

It only took a few days to get to Zeb's Landing, the repairs that Oz had been able to do on the space station allowing them to go much faster without the risk of suddenly exploding. Zim took that time to work out what kinks and familiarity issues he could with his new arm. Moving the arm as much as possible to get his brain used to its different motions and raise his hand-optical implant coordination as much as possible. He was still quite a bit off from perfect cohesion, but he could use it in a fight if he needed. For now though, his left hand was doing the majority of his typing and piloting.

Their entry into the declared neutral space that radiated out from the space port was noted by a single repeated message in mathematical code, the only type of universal language most of the universe could agree on, and then translated into irken by the ship. It was long-winded on purpose; but the main highlights were 'everyone is welcome,' 'any location within a million kilometers of Zeb's Landing is neutral territory' and 'fuck with us or our rules and you die.' And a soon as it came within sight, it was easy to see why the space port had little to be afraid of. It was truly massive in scale; an almost cylinder like structure that was around 20,000 kilometers tall and 6,000 kilometers in diameter. Bristling in laser cannons and shield arrays, even the Massive would have trouble cracking open Zeb's Landing. And that was before the thousands of mercs and traders ganged up on it or Zeb's landing would just teleport away to the next sector. It's a fortress, trading post and galactic pit stop all in one. If you needed something and you weren't affiliated with any of the more powerful races in the universe, your best bet was Zeb's.

It didn't take long to get closer to the space port and receive an automated direction to the least crowded docking port. Said docking port was little more than a huge rectangular opening in the hull with several levels of landing pads and a viscous shield to let ships in and out, but keep the atmosphere in. Just from a glance, he could see several dozen different species represented in the ships located around the port.

However, one particular ship caught his eye, an Vortian Zirack-Class troop carrier. Nothing too usual about that, because after the Disaster of Sector Y-32, the Vortian fleet had been effectively destroyed as a fighting force and the surviving ships had scattered all over the galaxy even as the Irken Armada made for their home world. Many of said ships had since then become rather popular to own due to their highly advanced capabilities compared to the grand majority of races' space vessels. So it wasn't too strange to see one here, but it was strange to see it still sporting the Imperial Vortian Crest proudly on its side and still in relatively good working order, despite the notoriously complicated Vortian mechanisms. It didn't take a genius to figure out that meant that was at least one bitter, vengeance-thirsty Vortian in Zeb's Landing, and considering the craft was meant to carry at least two dozen troops along with four crew – there was likely to be many more than one Vortian who would love to make his head their trophy. Typical. He'd have to be careful.

Gliding into his allotted docking pad, Zim set his ship down as gently as he could and let loose a small breathe. He'd made it without blowing up, so... positives. Now he'd just have to find a unlikely merchant of Irken parts, avoid any species which the Irkens had pissed off at one time or another, survive long enough to repair his ship, scrounge up any info he could on the owners of the gigantic stealth ship that had attacked him... and he had no money. Simple enough. After securing all his supplies in the back of the ship, depositing a sole laser pistol into his pack, and making sure all the still functioning security functions were activated; Zim disengaged the bubble shield over the cockpit and climbed out onto the docking pad. Making a quick scan of the area to see if he'd be gunned down as soon as he set down, he reactivated the bubble and stalked off to the entrance, doing his best to avoid the other visitors that walked and mingled around him.

As expected, the entrance was heavily guarded by space station's policing force, the so-called Zeb's Landing Justicars. A highly sophisticated name, but not unwarranted. The Justicars were recruited from the common rabble that regularly passed through the station as it roamed the galaxy, taking the myriad aliens that space had to offer and then beating them into shape. A couple months of brutal training, armed with heavy laser rifles, shock sticks at their sides, decked out in the blue and gray full-bodied armor of the Justicars, gold badges emblazoned with 'ZLJ' on their chest plates and faces hidden by blacked-out visors – they were an imposing sight. It also didn't hurt they were an army unto themselves with tens of thousands stationed throughout the station. They kept the rabble under control, made sure business went smoothly and further advanced the view that attacking the thriving space port was nigh lunacy for anyone.

Zim could almost feel their eyes on him the moment he filed into the mass of aliens passing through the entrance, so it wasn't very surprising that when he got to the loose line of justicars, the one nearest to him stepped in his way and stopped him.

_~Just keep it cool Zim.~ _OZ whispered before disappearing back into Zim's PAK, busy with whatever faulty code could be busy with.

Dispelling what little irritation he felt, Zim looked up into the black visor of the justicar and saw by his shape that he was of the planetjacker species, big and muscle-bound. The justicar remained silent for a while, studying Zim intently, before his helmet's purposefully static-laced speaker spoke.

"What's your purpose here, Irken?" the justicar demanded even as Zim saw two additional justicars heading their way through the crowd.

Zim's eyes slid back to look at the towering guard before clicking his tongue in irritation, another annoyingly human tick he had picked up with being among them for so long.

"Looking for some parts for my ship." Zim said smoothly even as the justicar's companions flanked him on either side.

A heavy pause passed as Zim felt their eyes examine him, gauging both him and his words.

"And why does an Irken need to be at Zeb's Landing to find said parts? Last I heard you guys conquered and created another blasted storage world not too far from here." The justicar at his right, some sort of birdlike alien he not familiar with, questioned.

Zim could hear a small measure of disgust in that one's voice, but he ignored it as he pressed on.

"I'm no longer part of the Irken Empire or its Armada," Zim stated even as they left a slightly bitter state in his mouth, "so this is the best place to look for any loose parts for my vessel."

Another pregnant pause occurred, the idea that the justicars were conversing on their personal radios with their command center a very real possibility in Zim's mind. Most liking trying to get a ruling on whether to let him pass or not. Thankfully, Irkens were notoriously xenophobic and proud to the point of almost lunacy. The fact that Zim had disavowed his ties to his empire and willingly let himself consort with aliens, it would go a long way to proving that he was indeed a rouge irken and was there for business. That and the fact no properly supplied member of the Irken Empire would allow the bulky monstrosity that was his right arm be his replacement limb. And... the rather ramshackle looking ship he had arrived in. He must of looked for all the universe to be a penniless refugee, which was really want he counted on to be admitted in. The Justicars were committed in keeping the business flowing and if Zim was indeed here for the business he so urgently needed, they would let him in.

The justicar that had stopped him suddenly moved aside and addressed him. "Go on in, but we'll have our eyes on you irken. Stay out of trouble or **else**."

Zim strode past them without a word and entered Zeb's Landing proper, the eyes that he felt burning into his back never wavering.

* * *

><p>The immense size of Zeb's Landing truly surprised Zim, with its seemingly endless honeycomb of shops, food courts, bars, stores, warehouses, guard towers, elevators, etc. All of it seemingly hastily thrown together but still organized in the different tiers and levels of the space port's interior. It was crowded, noisy and almost everyone seemed to take notice of the rather tall irken as he made his way through the different levels and streets. However, thanks to a rather helpful digital map on a wall he soon found his way to the largest spaceship parts dealer in the port. 'Janko's' read the sign on the door, and while it seemed fairly standard; the building itself took up a whole section of the level it was on. Nearly a billion square meters in size and apparently only the 'showroom' for Janko's operation, the short business summary on the map mentioning several other warehouses in both Zeb's Landing and on other worlds. If anyone was gonna have irken parts, it was gonna be him.<p>

It was honestly a surprise when Zim stepped into the building to find himself in a small, dimly lit, sparsely furnished waiting room with a long service counter. It was completely empty save a single insect-looking alien behind the counter, but he was partially hid in shadow.

"Ah, finally. You made it. Come closer irken, so we might deal."

Though he knew he was expected and whoever had addressed him felt comfortable enough to make it clear he had been watched, Zim didn't have much choice in the matter and strode up to the counter. A quick glance behind him confirmed an almost silent grinding sound he had hear, the door was gone. There would be no interruptions apparently.

Walking up the alien with an ease he did not feel, Zim could finally see it was an insect of some type. Nearly seven feet tall, exo-skeleton mostly a dull black, and seemed to be a cross between a ant and a cockroach. Oh... and glowing red eyes. Because that's what Zim needed; a large, menacing looking insect who was interested in making 'deals' with him. Zim cycled up the servos that controlled his mechanical arm just in case. As he stopped right in front of the counter, the alien in question leaned forward into the light and smiled. Its teeth were rotten, but sharp and serrated. Zim saw a resemblance to the 'smiles' of the Earth's sharks.

"Hello Zim, my name is Janko, the owner of this...quaint establishment," the now named Janko said in its species' buzzy vocals.

Zim felt his pulse quick a bit before settling when he heard his name. Janko seemed to notice and smiled a bit wider.

"Yes I know who you are. We don't get Irkens... almost at all here at the Landing, so when you arrived you caused a bit of a stir. Didn't take long to match you to a Irken named 'Zim.' Only one invader had been sent to this backwater sector and he was the one that had nearly destroyed his own world. You don't blow up half the planet of one of the most powerful Empires in the universe without your name being spread around. Some short little fool named Zim."

Janko stopped to look Zim up and down even though Zim knew it was only for dramatic effect. The vile insect had probably inspected every inch of him through unseen cameras the minute he set foot on the space port. The ex-invader felt the overwhelming need to stick his metallic claws into Janko's eye sockets, but held back with steely control.

"You aren't short anymore, and from the look of that arm and that look in your eyes... I'm guessing you're not much of a fool anymore... hopefully. I'll cut straight to the point Irken, as it seems you're getting ready to try and tear my head off. A need a capable someone to do a few jobs for me."

Janko's eyes burned into Zim's as his smile held.

"A capable someone who could, in exchange for these few jobs, be given some _misplaced_ Irken ship parts, supplies and whatever else he wants in payment."

The smile disappeared.

"A capable someone who just so happens to be part of the most hated empire in the universe and has a lot of enemies on Zeb's Landing. A capable someone who would benefit from the protection the job and its handlers entails."

Zim felt his insides go cold as the threat rang clear and true. Janko had trapped him with no way out. It was done and over before Zim even had a choice. If he refused, he would die. If he ran, he would die. If he killed Janko, he would die... and Gir's killers would remain alive. That thought solidified his answer. He had to find those responsible and rend them into tiny little pieces. If it meant working with an apparent criminal, who even now threatened his life, so be it. He needed to stay alive and supplied. Janko, in a twisted way, was offering both up as long as Zim played by his tune for a time.

Zim reached up with his metallic arm and shook Janko's proffered hand. Zim tightened his hand just enough for it to be mildly painful and stared at the parts' broker with a fake smile. Janko's death at a later date would not sadden the ex-invader. He had always wanted to test how much their exoskeletons could hold to a hydraulic press.


End file.
